“If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.”
Every day, my team talks to talented HR workers who feel overwhelmed by their background checking process — including mountains of manual admin and all the regulatory requirements they have to comply with.
But how do you know when the process is broken enough to need a change?
One Deloitte study found that HR staff are spending up to 57% of their time on admin — that’s over half a day on tasks that aren’t impacting the wider business. Background checks are critical for your businesses’ security and reputation, but they’re often a source of stress and unnecessary paperwork.
Especially if you’re FCA-regulated and worried about SMCR and the new Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act (ECCTA), it’s important to get it right.
At Zinc, we’ve heard too many stories about talented HR professionals spending ages on manual background checks, or going back and forth with a provider that didn’t prioritise them.
That’s why we decided to do something about it.
A good background checking partner should take work off your plate with automation, deliver safer and more reliable results, and help you put your best foot forward for new candidates.
If they can’t? Well, it’s time to wave goodbye because it’s out with the old, and in with the new.
Keep reading for six big signs that you need to find a new background checking provider — and a transparent view on how Zinc can help.
Your team is overworked, and background checks are making it worse
I don’t think I’ve ever met an HR team that didn’t have a long list of projects sitting in the backlog.
But the wrong background checking provider just makes the problem worse. Whether it’s tracking down candidate documents, chasing references, uploading paperwork into the system, or going back and forth between platforms to make sure you’re ready for the next audit, manual work takes away from the bigger impact your team could have.
One study found that 58% of HR executives said the greatest barrier to achieving their department’s 2024 priorities were a lack of time and dedicated personnel.
Things like DEI initiatives, improving your onboarding process, dealing with queries from current employees, or strategic planning are all too important to let it slide.
Questions to ask:
- Where are you making tradeoffs on long-term gains in favour of short-term actions?
- Where’s the biggest bottleneck for your team: launching the checks, getting candidates to submit documents, or reviewing results?
- What percentage of your team’s day is spent on tasks that could be automated?
You’re paying a provider — but still doing the work yourself
If you still have to manually chase references, you’re not really outsourcing.
We spoke to the team at Jensten and found that, with their old providers, around 50% of their checks needed manual actions, on top of document sourcing and troubleshooting for employees. If a check got stuck in the referencing process, they had to manually follow up, which created work that the team didn’t have time for.
Sound familiar?
On average, traditional providers require anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes of admin to launch a check. At Zinc, we’ve got that down to approximately 90 seconds of admin through automation and empowering candidates to submit their own documents.
At Jensten, that meant that HR team actions were down from 50% to 10%, freeing up a full week of the team’s time to focus on big-picture projects. Read the full case study here.
Paying for inefficiency means double the loss, in both time and money.
Questions to ask:
- Is your automation really automatic?
- Have you tried automating repetitive tasks? Why or why not?
- When things go wrong, will your provider sort it or do you have to get your hands dirty?
A bad candidate experience is hurting your employer brand
Especially in fields like healthcare and education, if candidates have to wait too long for their checks to clear, they’ll find something else.
And then you’re back to square one.
Even if they make it through a long, clunky onboarding process, it’s not the best first impression a new employee can have of your company. The first part of the onboarding journey is crucial. One BambooHR survey found that 89% of employees who had a solid onboarding process are engaged in their current jobs — which is the ultimate long-term goal.
Questions to ask:
- Am I embarrassed to put our new employees through our background checking process?
- What percentage of employees drop out before their start date? Why?
- Can I customise the platform to reflect our employer brand?
The thought of running re-checks fills you with dread
If you’ve got dozens or even hundreds of re-checks hanging over your head, you know that it’s not a great feeling. But they’re essential for compliance — doubly so for FCA-required annual re-checks.
Getting all your employees enrolled, avoiding errors, managing the results: if you have any doubts about your provider’s ability to handle a lot of re-checks at once, they might not be right for what you need.
The right provider should allow you to customise the checks that you’re running, easily bulk upload, and run checks when it suits you without scheduling weeks or months in advance. They should also automatically remind you when it’s time to run re-checks, so you’re not left juggling haphazard calendar reminders yourself.
Questions to ask:
- Has the team ever put off re-checks for fear of the extra admin, or because there’s just too much on your plate?
- Are re-checks simple to get started, or do they require a lot of lead time?
- When you get results back, do they pull straight through to your existing HR tech stack?
You’re worried about errors in background checks
(Not so) fun fact: human error is the number one risk in your screening processes. And the more your processes lean on manual admin — whether it’s on your side or from your provider – the greater the risk is.
Automation is the best way to remove this risk from your hiring process. Traditional background checking providers pass candidate data around dozens of human touchpoints. Tech-first platforms, including platforms verified by the UK government’s Identity Verification and Trust (IDVT) Framework, are set up to guard against data breaches, incomplete reports, and inaccurate results.
Questions to ask:
- Have you ever had sensitive information go astray, or have data sitting in your download folders?
- Can your provider give you tailored advice on your regulatory responsibilities?
- Are you confident in your provider’s ability to manage sensitive data manually and safely?
You’ve got questions about regulation, but nowhere to turn
Improvisation is a valuable skill. But not when it comes to background checking.
Whether it’s BS7858, GDPR, SMCR, or another bit of the alphabet soup that makes up compliance regulations, it’s not always clear what exactly is required of your company to stay on the right side of the law.
And when audits get involved, it gets even more stressful.
The right provider has resources to help guide you in the right direction, and time to offer advice. That doesn’t mean huge offshore customer service teams, where the interpretation changes based on who’s on the phone. It’s reliable advice that you can turn to every time.
Questions to ask:
- If I have questions about compliance, who do I ask first?
- How long does it take to get an answer from my current provider?
- Does the advice from my current provider change based on who I’m speaking to?
If any of these sound familiar, it’s time to make a change
Look, we get it. With everything else going on, finding and onboarding a new background checking provider isn’t at the top of anyone’s to-do list.
But what happens when “good enough” turns into a liability? Don’t wait to find out, and don’t waste your time going round and round in circles with subpar providers.
At Zinc, we believe that everyone deserves the benefits that a solid background checking partner can offer.
If you’d like to learn more, book some time to chat with our team, or connect directly with me on LinkedIn.
